TEAM EFA LiNKS

CHARiTY OF THE MONTH PROGRAM

Each month, TEAM EFA designates one animal charity as our Charity of the Month.

All EFA Charities of the Month is the charity of choice of at least one EFA member.

EFA members who choose to donate a portion of their product sales to the EFA Charity of the Month, please tag those listings with our cotm tag.

If after the month is done & your products are still tagged with the cotm tag then those will go to benefit next month's cotm. If you wish to donate a percentage to another charity, including a -previous- cotm, please remove 'cotm' from your tag.

Using these tags helps to identify your pledge and makes it easier for shoppers & Treasury makers to locate your cotm products.

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Thursday, July 31, 2014

There's only one live greyhound racing track left in Texas, but it's doing so badly that it's looking to get subsidized with slot machines. If the proposal to do this gets approved, greyhounds will continue to to be exploited by this industry.

Please sign the petition asking Governor Rick Perry not to subsidize greyhound racing by refusing to legalize slot machines in the state.

In another disastrous plan from the Bureau of Land Management, it plans to ship 100 of our wild burros to Guatemala where they'll be used as working animals. Not only does this move fly in the face of federal laws that are intended to protect our wild horses and burros, but it will do nothing to help alleviate the problem the agency has already caused by rounding up and warehousing too many animals.

A developer in Florida wants to demolish rare forest in the state to put up a Walmart and a strip mall. Wildlife officials and environmentalists have raised concerns that doing so could harm countless rare and endangered species who have less and less space to live.

Animal advocates have exposed many of the problems that come with using large, exotic animals in entertainment and at events. Now they're urging the Maryland Renaissance Fair to join others that have banned the use of these animals over concerns about their welfare and public safety.

Every summer an estimated 25,000 geese are killed by Wildlife Services across the country in the name of air safety. In New York City, an estimated 5,000 Canada geese and their babies were killed between 2009-2012, but the number of bird strikes hasn't dropped by much.

Please send a letter to New York lawmakers and wildlife officials asking them to stop using lethal control to reduce bird strikes.

Friday, July 18, 2014

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering legislation that would bring live pigeon shoots to an end once and for all. Even though the majority of voters are opposed to it and alternatives are widely available, these events continue to draw so called hunters who enjoy maiming and killing birds for entertainment.

Please sign the petition urging Pennsylvania lawmakers not to cave to pressure from a special interest group that wants to see these sickening events continue.

A 19-year-old cheerleader from Texas sparked widespread outrage after posting pictures of herself over the slain bodies of the endangered animals she killed. Facebook has since removed the photos, but she still wants her own show.

Please sign the petition asking cable networks not to air shows that glorify the senseless slaughter of wildlife, including rare and endangered species.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is being sued to downgrade manatees from endangered to threatened, but their advocates believe the future is too uncertain to weaken protection for them. They've already seen record losses over recent years and face potential threats that range from climate change, habitat loss and pollution to diseases, harassment, collisions with boaters and a host of environmental problems, including red tide, algal blooms and cold weather.

Horses were domesticated by humans who needed their strength to perform a variety of duties that they were unable to do. And horses, being the docile animals that they are, complied. They became known as “beasts of burden” as if this and nothing else described what they were.

In the age before the automobile, horses were notoriously overworked, and many died in the streets. In NYC, they pulled wagons loaded with people and goods, and they served as the power for the City’s street trolley system. Between 100,000 and 200,000 horses lived in the city at the turn of the century. Many were literally worked to death — their carcasses left on the street waiting for the street cleaners. From an article by Joel A. Tarr in American Heritage Magazine – Urban Pollution – many long years ago “The average streetcar nag had a life expectancy of barely two years, and it was a common sight to see drivers and teamsters savagely lashing their overburdened animals. The mistreatment of city horses was a key factor in moving Henry Bergh to found the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 1866.”

During World War I, horses were transported via rail to New York City to be shipped to Europe for use in the war. They pulled cannons, trucks and ambulances and were literally worked till they dropped in the ravages of war and hand-to-hand combat. Hundreds of thousands of horses did not make it out alive, dying from artillery fire, starvation and disease. With the end of the war, and with increased mechanization in the 20th century, the need for draft horses declined. Many of these horses were sold to slaughter. Humans had contributed to the overpopulation of draft horses by over breeding, cross breeding and selective breeding. A 2008 article from Horseman Magazine says “Most draft horses however were really the result of selective breeding. Programs for breeding were primarily set up to produce these large, muscular and powerful horses.”

The present day urban carriage horses are not work horses although the drivers like to pretend they are. That term needs to be reserved for horses who helped their owners survive before the industrial revolution. Instead, they are entertainment horses – they are horses of a different color.They are often decorated with feathered head dresses, some with glittered body paint and painted hoofs. Undignified – a tawdry decoration to attract tourists. A work horse would pull a plough to till the earth so the farmer could plant seeds and feed his family. A carriage horse pulls unsuspecting tourists around a city to see the sights. These tourists don’t know about cruelty and safety issues, and the carriage drivers certainly aren’t informing them.

By law, a NYC carriage horse may work a punishing nine hours a day, seven days a week. Throughout their long shifts, they are confined between the shafts of their carriage wearing heavy equipment, blinders and a metal bit in their mouths. During the holiday season, the horses are worked to exhaustion. The current law requires a 15 minute break every two hours, but it is not enforced. At other times customers are scarce, the horse stands on the hack line, often ignored by her driver whose attention is elsewhere.

She is frequently bored, either mentally shutting down and appearing dispirited, or repeatedly pawing / pounding her hoof on the pavement. It is a form of displacement behavior on which the horse eventually becomes stereotyped. Restricted by the carriage, she has no freedom of movement. She is not even able to scratch an itch.

Although it is against the law in NYC for horses to be left untethered or unattended, it is a common practice. In 2007, a horse named Smoothie was attached to her empty carriage waiting unattended at Central Park South when she was spooked by a loud noise. Frantic, she bolted, got her legs tangled in the carriage and ended up crashing into a tree and dying. Another horse who saw Smoothie bolt also spooked and ran into traffic, crashing into a car. On October 28, 2011, an unattended horse spooked on Central Park South near Columbus Circle, bolting into traffic and ending up in the park where he crashed into the wall. He is reported to no longer be in the business.

Carriage drivers like to characterize themselves as the experts, the “real horsemen”; this is a thinly veiled and polarizing tactic designed to suggest that anyone who wants to see this business come to an end in the large cities lacks knowledge. They take this line of reasoning even further, stating that proponents of a ban “know nothing about horses” and that the carriage horses–all horses, in fact–need a job. This, of course, is a human concept. Having knowledge of horses does not equate with treating them well or knowing what is best for them.

When people make money off the back of a horse or any other animal, their first priority is invariably profit. One does not have to know a fetlock from the withers to know that enslaving these horses and shackling them to a carriage for hours on end is inhumane and is all about what the driver wants – not the horse.

Among the most abused horses today are those who pull carriages with tourists in major urban areas like New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston, Atlanta and Rome. In New York, these horses are forced to haul tourists through the congested streets of midtown. When no longer able to do this pulling, they are removed from the business.

Unconfirmed rumors abound concerning their engraved hoof identification numbers being sanded off so they can’t be identified as a NYC carriage horse when they are in the auction kill pen. Freedom of Information requests from the Department of Health reveal a very high turnover of carriage horses – between 60 and 70 a year – about 1/3 of the total horses. Auctions are the likely place to sell them and recoup costs. When a horse is sold outside the City, as most are, records are not required to be sent to the Department of Health – only eventual notification that the horse is no longer in the system so the driver does not have to pay the license fee. Although the industry has taken advantage of the NYC landscape to ply their trade, the drivers are not accountable for where the horses go, and the City has never seen fit to change that, despite pleas from advocates who believe they deserve a humane retirement. There is no transparency in this trade although they benefit from it being a cash only business with few meaningful restrictions. Every year more than 100,000 equines are transported from the US across the Mexican and Canadian borders where they are slaughtered for human consumption and shipped to Europe and Japan.

Our use of horses over the millenia is nothing to be proud of – the devastation of war; the exploitation of animals – but people felt they had no choice. Today, we don’t need to use horses to work for us. We have a choice, and can and must choose not to exploit them.

New York City needs to move into the 21st century and stop pretending that this is a big tourist draw or that it provides lots of revenue to the city. It is not and it does not. Horse-drawn carriages pose a danger for the horses, their passengers, other vehicles and pedestrians. Our focus is on urban, commercial / tourist carriage businesses in cities like New York – nothing else. Horses have highly developed social relationships and need mental and physical stimulation. They are exceedingly social animals and should have the opportunity to graze in a pasture in the company of other equines – something that is denied to them as a carriage horse.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is being sued to weaken protection for Florida manatees, which could result in their being downgraded from endangered to threatened. Advocates for these gentle giants are worried that they're facing far too many threats to weaken protection.

An estimated 988 million birds each year are believed to be killed by collisions with buildings and are the second largest human-related cause of death for birds. Last year legislation was introduced that would require bird-safe materials and design features be incorporated into new and existing federal public buildings, which would help keep birds safe from collisions with glass, but it hasn't moved forward.

Thursday, July 03, 2014

Following the recent release of footage from Animal Defenders International showing abuse elephants who are forced to give rides face throughout their lives has led to more calls to ban wild animals in circuses and stop these potentially dangerous interactions between people and elephants.

Please sign the petition asking city officials and festival committee members to keep elephants and people safe by banning elephant rides at the North Judson Mint Festival.

2. Tell the USDA to Take Meaningful Action Against Abusive Biotech Company

Santa Cruz Biotechnology has been in trouble with the USDA on multiple occasions (78 times in six years) for violating the Animal Welfare Act, with the worst case involving the USDa finding 841 goats in poor condition at a facility that the company had been hiding.

Please send a letter to the USDA asking it to revoke Santa Cruz Biotech's license and levy the biggest fine it can for repeatedly allowing animals to suffer.

In June, one of Kenya's most famous and beloved elephants was killed by poachers for the tusks that made him so popular. Now animal advocates are calling on the president to provide around-the-clock protection for the country's last six "great tuskers" in an effort to keep them safe.

Please sign the petition asking President Uhuru Kenyatta to order protection for these elephants and provide Kenya Wildlife Services with the resources they need to keep poachers from killing them.

Tuesday, July 01, 2014

The Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages, NYC was formed in 2006 in response to a tragic accident that killed a young carriage horse named Spotty. Having personally been involved with this issue since the early 1990s the President of BHDC, Elizabeth Forel, knew the only ethical and moral decision was to shut the industry down in NYC, which has been their campaign since that time. Elizabeth shares: "For years, we had tried to get better regulations of the industry to no avail – so we knew that if we were going to work on this issue, it would be for a ban – nothing else. We set about lobbying and educating the City Council and public – even animal activists - since this had not been a public issue for about ten years."

In 2007, then Council Member Tony Avella introduced a bill to ban the industry in NYC. While it got some support in the Council , it did not get the support of then Council Speaker Quinn and Mayor Bloomberg. But many people started to pay attention.

NYC's new mayor, Bill deBlasio, came into office in January 2014. He made a campaign promise to ban the industry but so far nothing has been done. He has said that legislation will be introduced by the end of the year. We are waiting patiently and continue fighting this fight. It has been particularly difficult for us to get the word out locally because the media - led by the NY Daily News - has taken a position on the side of the carriage trade.

The industry is inherently inhumane. The horses live in multi storied stables in stalls that are less than half of what experts recommend. They have no access to pasture. They are legally allowed to work nine hours a day, seven days a week - in the congested traffic of NYC - in very hot and cold weather.

As prey animals, horses are predictably unpredictable and can spook at the slightest provocation. At 1500 to 2000 pounds, they become unwitting weapons who can injure or kill themselves or passersby. We continue to get our message out through advertising, articles and social media.

We launched an advertising campaign - starting about a year ago advertising in neighborhood papers in all the boroughs. Last December we did "bus tail" ads - these are the ads on the back of the City buses. We are currently working on a subway poster ad, which we hope to release in the fall. Our goal is to reach New Yorkers and politicians about this issue - inviting them to find out the truth.

The Coalition to Ban Horse-Drawn Carriages is an entirely volunteer, grass roots organization. No salaries are paid and all donations received go toward educational materials such as printing costs for flyers and reports, advertising, posters, our weekly newsletter Horse Sense and our web site. Our ongoing campaign is to publicize the plight of NYC carriage horses and to promote legislation to ban this industry. Please take a moment to sign our petition !

Our volunteers consist of people from all walks of life. Some have a background in animal activism; for others, it was the first time they got involved with animal issues. But what we all have in common is compassion for the carriage horses and the hope that this cruel industry will come to an end.

Our advisors consist of a number of horse experts, rescuers, equine veterinarians and equine welfare orgnaizations. For security reasons and for their protection, we do not list their names.

The Coalition is a standing committee of The Coalition for NYC Animals, Inc., which was incorporated in 1995 as a 501-c-(4). This is currently the only issue in which we are involved. Because we are incorporated as a 501 (c) 4, we can work to influence legislation and elections.

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LiNKS to EFA MEMBERS

Etsy for Animals (EFA) aka Artists Helping Animals, is a team of independent artists, craftspeople, vintage sellers and craft suppliers on Etsy.com who are dedicated to providing charitable relief to animals by donating a portion of the profits from their shops to an animal charity of their choosing, and/or to EFA's featured Charity of the Month.